The Worst Kind of Want by Liska Jacobs

Author:Liska Jacobs
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

* * *

It’s dark by the time we reach Rome. We pass the Colosseum again, now lit in gold and white lights. The streets are damp and shining from a sudden rain shower. It’s humid, the air thick and smelling of exhaust.

We eat at the St. Regis, in the mirrored ballroom beneath glowing chandeliers. There are potted ferns everywhere. Frescoes on the arched ceilings, the color so rich they look cartoonlike and cheap. Everything is gilded. When we’re seated I realize the chairs are actually plastic, not lacquered wood—and those mirrored walls have been treated, made to look aged. There is a phoniness to the room, a feeling of something that was once grand, now poorly modernized.

Guy orders champagne, but then looking at me he changes his mind. “Bring us two large whiskeys before you bring us anything else.”

The drink does me good. At first, I think it isn’t working, the headache is worse than before, the room more vulgar and repulsive, but then suddenly I’m drunk. The gaudy pomp starts to grow on me, I feel affection toward the other patrons—the well-dressed Arabs, the women in their beautiful silk hijabs and chunky jewels, the older couples, even the white-haired woman across the room who is staring and smiling because she thinks Guy and I are younger versions of she and her husband.

I take Guy’s hand after the appetizer of sea bass ceviche, after Guy asks if I want another whiskey.

“Or would you prefer to see the wine list?”

“Wine list,” I say, smiling, and he smiles too.

We drink a bottle of Gewürztraminer from Alto Adige, and then with the main course a bottle of Chianti from Tuscany.

“I see why you look the way you do,” he says, motioning to me with his glass.

I sit straighter, run my fingers through my hair. “What do you mean?”

“You are in love with Rome,” he says. “And it is in love with you.”

The chef sends out a special for us—a tiramisu with ginger jelly and chocolate flakes.

“Oh, yummy,” he says.

And I can tell by his eyes, by their watery sheen, that he will try to take me up to his room.

I take a large sip of wine. “How is Trudy?”

He offers me the last of the tiramisu, and when I shake my head he scoops it into his mouth and relaxes into his chair, patting his stomach. “Let’s not talk about her,” he says. “I’m here with you.”

He’s taken my hand, moved it to below the table, onto his leg.

“A nightcap first?” I ask, and he calls the waiter over and orders us two cognacs.

I don’t want to think of the effort it will take. The layers of clothes to take off; the hope that I can make him hard, that I will get wet. Sex with Guy sounds exhausting. But haven’t I wanted this? For years now, I’ve been waiting for him to turn back to me.

He swipes the check from the table. “I owe you enough,” he says, slipping the waiter his card.

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